5-person team drives electric vans for 6,500 kilometres from Geneva to Doha

A Swiss-led team has driven electric vans across Europe and the Arabian Peninsula to Qatar to showcase zero-emission battery powered vehicles, organisers said Sunday.

The five-strong Swiss and German team set out from Geneva on August 28 in two electric Volkswagen vans on a 6,500 kilometre (4,000 mile) journey that ended in Doha on Saturday.

"The motivation was really to do something unusual," the group's leader Frank Rinderknecht told AFP. "Certainly we did have the risk of not arriving -- technical issues, health issues or an accident."

The journey aimed to raise awareness about the environmental benefits of electric vehicles, he said. "If our trip put just a little bit of rethinking, of initiative, into people's minds then I am not unhappy."

The journey started with a crossing of the Swiss Alps and included what organisers believe was the first west-to-east crossing of Saudi Arabia with electric vehicles.

The team's ID. Buzz VW vans -- modelled on the German manufacturer's Combi campervan -- travelled across 12 countries, reaching Aqaba in Jordan from Turkey by ship.

However, the trip highlighted shortcomings of the charging infrastructure, Rinderknecht said, comparing the mismatch of technologies to the "early days of telecommunication".

In Europe, the team had to use numerous apps to pay for charging points across different regions. In Jordan, they had to adapt their European systems to the Chinese hardware they found.

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